Whatever Happened to Facebook?
by SurlyCoach
Summary: Listen up! I know y'all are wondering what happened to Facebook. Well, come on in and read this story. I tell you what. There are lot of Joe McCoys in this world.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**

Bumping this to let you know I am moving the **Friday Night Lights Facebook Season 6** I couldn't post here to Live journal. It's not on ICanStop's Archive of Your Own account anymore. Well, we're in the process of moving it. Will expand while posting. Wanted to have fun with pictures and such. If you missed it or want to read again, you can go here (just replace all the dots and slashes with figures – can't put sites in here): erikataylor dot livejournal dot com slash 773 dot html

**Whatever Happened to Facebook?  
**_**or Rules, Rules, Rules**_

"What the hell is wrong with my Facebook?" Coach Eric Taylor demands. "Why did it stop working?" He bangs on the keyboard of his laptop.

Tami walks into the kitchen nook with a bottle of wine and two glasses and starts pouring. She pushes him a glass of wine. "You're going to need this, sugar."

"Why?"

"I've got some bad news. Facebook has been eliminated."

"But Facebook is how I keep track of all my boys! It's how I know they're doing a'ight! It's how I…you know…"

" - Continue being a molder of men?"

"Yeah!" he yells, slamming the screen shut. "What do you mean it's been eliminated?"

"Well, you know how we're a part of this story that's happening on a fanficiton website?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," he says.

She downs half her wine and tops her glass off again. "Well, apparently, it's against the rules of that website to post any stories in chat/script format, including Facebook-style stories."

"What? Why would there be a rule against that?" Coach Taylor hasn't touched his wine glass. He's too irritated to drink. "You know, it's possible to have an entire plot in that format. I mean, stuff was happening in our story – people were getting hired and fired, falling in love, getting married, descending into alcoholism, getting pregnant – "

"- I know, sugar. But it's a rule."

Grumbling, he stands up and goes to his home office. He grabs the rule book. "Rule my ass," he mutters as he heads back and sits at the table again. "I don't remember any rule about that. I don't see that rule. I see a rule against interactive entries - - no Choose Your Own Adventures."

"That's a shame. I loved those books when I was a girl. I spent hours reading those under my desk in school."

He winks at her. "You always were a rebel."

"Why would there be a rule against that?" she asks. "Wouldn't that be a good way to spur creativity and get the writer to keep writing?"

"And kind of fun, too, to have the fans participate. Better than face paint even."

She brushes a wisp of strawberry blonde hair away from her eye. "Well, I suppose you wouldn't want people to be too interactive on the internet. I mean it's not like it was created for people to interact with each other."

He grunts. "There's also a rule against _stories with non-historical and non-fictional characters: actors, musicians, and etc._ You don't think we're in danger of violating that rule, do you, since we're about to mention the author of our story?"

"I don't see how," she says. "The author isn't going to be a _character_ in our story. She's not going to be _described_. She doesn't have any _lines_. Other than the narration, which is the case in any story."

He flips a page in the rule book. "Well I still don't see any rule against…oh….oh…there it is. Number 6 under entries NOT ALLOWED: Chat/script format and keyboard dialogue based entries. I guess the author overlooked that."

"Well, the author probably shouldn't click I AGREE without reading."

"No one ever reads all that fine print online, do they?" he asks. "So how did the author find out our story was in violation of the rules, then?"

Tami takes a sip of wine. "Somebody posted a review of the Facebook story we were in, when we were already four chapters into it, informing the author that it had to be rewritten."

"Who?"

"Some member of a group calling itself Eliminator."

"Eliminator? Sounds like a nickname for one of my players." Coach Taylor scratches his head. "Are these eliminators official refs?"

"I don't think so. I did some research on them in the website forums. As far as I can tell, it's a group full of Joe McCoy types."

He takes off his Pioneers cap and slaps it on the table. "Great. I thought we got away from that sort of nonsense when we moved to Phili." He runs his fingers through his ruffled hair. "So, what does this group do?"

"I think maybe they consider themselves vigilantes of a sort. You know, heroically riding the bandwidth and enforcing the rules far and wide."

He snickers.

"Hey, do you remember that famous definition of a puritan?"

He shakes his head slightly.

"A puritan is someone who is haunted by the continual fear that someone, somewhere, might be having a good time."

He chuckles.

"In my research on this group, I discovered they also reviewed one of my favorite fanfic pieces about you, a really old one by one of the original FNL fanfic authors. They said the author had to take it down because it used the second person."

"Seriously?" he asks. "You mean that beautiful one where I'm thinking about my love of the game? Why? There's a rule against second person?"

"Well," she takes the rule book from him and points, "if you're into broad interpretations."

He reads, "Entries Not Allowed #5 . Any form of interactive entry: second person/you based, Q&As, and etc."

"Obviously," she grumbles, "this group doesn't know the difference between an interactive you-based story and simple, second person narrative point of view."

He shakes his head. Then he frowns. "So how is our Facebook story going to be rewritten to comply with the regulations? I don't want to be thrown out of the game."

"Well, that's just the thing. I'm not sure it's going to work. This Eliminator gave two suggestions, and neither one seems feasible."

He leans back in his chair. "Well, we've got to do something. People are reading our story. They're following us. They like it. They want to know what's going to happen. We can't just leave them hanging! The last time I left anyone hanging was when I forfeited that Lion's game, and I swore I would never do anything like that again!"

_**Continued next chapter...**_


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: ** Bumping to let you know the eliminated story is going to be on live journal. Wanted to have more fun with pictures and such and expand bit by bit. Want to read? Go to (replace all the dots and slashes) – erikataylor dot livejournal dot com slash 773 dot html

_**Continued from last chapter…**_

"Well," Tami says, "the Eliminator's first suggestion was that the author, and I quote, '_rewrite the fic and remove the chat portion where they refer to what went on in the chat without writing any part of the story like the chat room_.'"

"What the hell does that mean?" he asks. "Is there some punctuation missing in that sentence? Some kind of inversion of word order going on? Some kind of subject verb confusion? I'm not following that at all!"

"I'm not sure exactly," she admits.

"No one goes into a chat room in this story anyway. Everything happens in the comments section. Is that what the vigilante means?"

"Quite possibly."

"So," he drums his fingers on the table top, "the first suggestion for rewriting our story is that our author remove 99.9% of it?"

Tami shrugs.

"What? Just keep the chapter headings?"

"I don't know, Eric. Do I look like I know?"

"A'ight, what's the second suggestion?"

She takes another sip of wine to steel herself. He still hasn't touched his. "'_Convert the chat into dialog. However, instead of using the he/she said dialog tags, it'd be more like he/she typed_'."

His voice grows lower. "You have got to be kidding me. Do you have any idea how tedious that would be?"

"I know, babe. I know exactly how tedious that would be. Can you imagine rewriting our story so that it said _Julie Taylor typed on Facebook using her iPad in class_ or _Landry Clarke typed on his laptop while waiting for his drummer to show up_ or _Tim Riggins typed on the computer at Buddy's bar _before every single stinking line? Who would want to read such a wordy mess? Not to mention that it would completely miss the point of the story being in Facebook format in the first place. It would take all the subtlety out of the story, make half the jokes fall flat, and take an 1,000-word chapter and make it 4,000 words, most of which would be white noise. I don't think there's any way our author's going to do that."

"So what she's going to do?"

"What the Eliminator wants, I suppose. Eliminate the story."

Coach Taylor stands up from his chair and starts pacing. "Just delete it then? Unfinished? Just walk away from the field?"

"I don't see that she has much other choice. She doesn't want to be harassed by Eliminators, and she doesn't want to risk getting her account eliminated."

"FORFEIT?" He slams the flat of his hand down on the table. "You're talking about forfeit!"

"Eric, what would you have her do? Write a complete piece of crap just to obey the rules?"

"No. No." He runs a hand through his hair. "But there's got to be some other way. I mean, I don't want my story to end. I still don't know if my daughter is having a boy or a girl. I still don't know if they're maybe going to one day promote me to head coach of MIT. I still don't know if you're going to get another job, or if Becky and Luke's marriage is going to work out with all that drinking he's been doing. I don't know if Tim and Lyla are going to stay together or if poor Lance is ever going to manage to hook up with - "

"- Landry, Eric. His name is Landry!"

He slumps down in the chair. "I know that. So, that's it? She's just going to delete the whole story?"

"She already has."

He sighs. He puts his face in his hands. Tami comes around the table and wraps her arms around him from behind. He leans back into her embrace. "There is one other possibility," she says.

He cranes his neck back to look up at her, eyes alight with hope. "What's that?"

"There's another site that doesn't have any rules against chat type stories, at least not as far as the author knows. You can post pretty much any ramblings you want there. It's called Live Journal. All the readers would have to do is a google search for Live Journal, search for Erika Taylor, find her journal, and read it."

"Is her name REALLY Erika Taylor?" Coach asks.

Tami kisses his head. "The coincidence is a bit rich, isn't it? So probably not."

"Can people comment over there?"

"I think so. I hope they do, anyway. That way they can let the author know the story hasn't gone into a black hole."

"Might could work," he says. "Okay." He nods. "That's the solution. The story isn't here anymore, no rules being violated. It will be posted at Live Journal, under Erika Taylor's journal, And it'll be called – what?"

"Season 6 on Facebook."

"Sounds good. But, why didn't the author just say all of this in a note?" he asks. "Why write an entire story to communicate this?"

"Well," she says, patting his head, "because it's also against the website's rules to post an author note as a stand-alone chapter. And also, I imagine, because she was feeling a bit snarky after that review."

"So what do we do now for the rest of this chapter?" His tongue snakes out lightly between his lips, and he runs it along their length. Then he wiggles his eyebrows. "We could have hot, wild sex and the author could describe it in detail."

"Actually, I think that's a violation of the website's rules as well."

He frowns. "But don't they have an M rating for stories?"

"Yeah, but their description for an M rating is pretty tame. It says: '_Non-explicit suggestive adult themes. Detailed descriptions of physical interaction of a sexual nature is considered Fiction MA_.' And the website doesn't allow fiction MA. So, sorry, no explicit sex, sugar."

"Well damn! Then can we at least have a sensual scene?"

"I think we can manage that." She comes over and sits on his lap, buries her hands in his hair, and brushes her lips gently against his. He tugs her closer and deepens the kiss. "Mhmmmm…." she murmurs. "Nice." Her fingers slide from his thick locks and caress his cheek. She nips at his neck and he moans.

Eric shifts her in his lap, hooks an arm under her legs and one at her waist, and rises with her clasped to his chest.

"Let's take this behind closed doors," he says. "Before we get eliminated." She snuggles her head against his neck, and he carries across the hallway toward the bedroom. "Baby," he says as he walks through the doorway and kicks the door shut behind himself, "in this bedroom, there are no rules."

"Except mine."

**THAT THERE'S THE END**


End file.
